Federal Reserve Board of Governors International Finance Discussion Papers 645: The Contributions of Domestic and External Factors to Latin American Devaluation Crises: An Early Warning Systems Approach

In this paper, the authors develop modified "early warning system" (EWS) approach to
identifying the roles of domestic and external factors in Latin America’s crises. Several probit
models of balance-of-payments crises, based on different identified sets of crisis dates, were
estimated for six Latin American countries. These models were then used to identify the separate contributions to the probabilities of crisis of domestic and external variables. The basic finding is that, when the effect of adverse external shocks is removed from the simulated
probabilities of devaluation in Latin America, the resultant simulated devaluation probabilities
are still high. Taken at face value, these results indicate that devaluation crises in Latin America primarily have been a function of domestic policy and economic imbalances, with exogenous external factors playing only a secondary role. All else equal, this suggests that the adoption of strongly fixed exchange rate regimes in the region may not be too costly in terms of diminished ability to respond to exogenous external shocks.

732
visits has been made through our site.

Untitled Document

Institute for International Economics Working Papers 9912: The Globalization of Services: What Has Happened? What Are the Implications?

Globalization has affected all facets of the world economy. This includes services, which in
most economies are the single largest contributor to economic growth and employment. However, despite its importance to national output, the impact of globalization on services is only recently receiving the attention of researchers and policy-makers. The aim of this paper is to provide a succinct survey of the process of globalization as it impacts upon the service economy.

The 1990s have witnessed pronounced boom-bust cycles in emerging-markets lending, culminating in the Asian financial and currency crisis of 1997-98. By examining the links between sovereign credit ratings and dollar bond yield spreads over 1989-97, this paper aims at broad empirical content for judging whether the three leading rating agencies — Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch IBCA — can intensify or attenuate boom-bust cycles in emerging-market lending.

729
visits has been made through our site.

Untitled Document

Bank of International Settlements Working Paper 76: The price of risk at year-end: evidence from interbank lending

This paper analyses Risk premia on overnight interbank loans increase by a factor of 13 at year-end. Further, this finding is not consistent with common theories of similar year-end anomalies in other money markets. In particular, seasonal liquidity demands seem to explain only a fraction of the effect. Although evidence of year-end window dressing is found in the interbank market, such activity cannot explain the change in pricing behaviour because information about the risk of interbank loans is never publicly disclosed.

Managing a banking crisis is one of the most difficult tasks to confront a policymaker. Often measures must be decided quickly, sometimes in the eye of a crisis. Almost inevitably, decisions will be guided by imperfect information. This is an intrinsic problem because the very business of banking is built on the possession of information not available to others. Moreover, the various actors may well have an incentive to distort the facts. Because banks lie at the centre of modern economies, policies can have far- reaching implications, political as well as economic. This is particularly true at the present time when so many emerging market economies are simultaneously grappling with banking crises. These issues were discussed by a small group of senior central bankers at the BIS in December 1998. Two days of discussion highlighted the extent of the challenges and the diversity of approaches to the problems. The country papers that follow highlight the main experiences of specific economies. This paper provides an overview of the main issues.

Created for directors of financial companies, Bank Director Magazine is a quarterly publication that examines issues of importance to bank directors. The online publication includes the complete table of contents, as well as a selection of articles from the current issue. The site also features a directory of names, addresses, and phone numbers of M&A investment banking and law firms, consulting firms, and technology and retail delivery companies.

This new 84-page guide from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Economics and Trade Unit (ETU), and International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) is a reference tool for policy-makers, practitioners, the media, and other interested users. Intended for readers with an expertise in trade, development, or the environment, but not the intersection of all three, the handbook attempts to explain how trade can affect the environment for better or worse. In the end, it seeks to help ensure that "trade's potential for growth and development does, in fact, lead to environmentally sustainable development." Users can read the full text of the report in .pdf format at either the UNEP or IISD site. By June 2000, both will feature a continually updated Web version of the report, with links to online articles and other resources offering more in-depth analysis of the themes covered in the report, a collection of related links, an interactive thematic index, and a searchable compendium of analyses of environment-trade disputes.

IEA Energy statisticians, using advanced data processing and telecommunications facilities, maintain, update and analyse a continuous flow of facts and figures from governments and industry, covering oil, natural gas, coal, electricity and heat generation. This information is stored in various databases, most of which are available on diskettes at the IEA. Databases are available for the main energy fuels and depending on the fuel, on three time periods: Annual, Quarterly and Monthly.

Sponsored by the History of Economics Society. You may search the database to locate archival materials (library collections, collected papers, departmental records, etc.) related to the history of economics: Name Search, Location Search, Complete Listing.

713
visits has been made through our site.

Untitled Document

Adjustment Costs of Investment in General Equilibrium: Analytic Results

This paper written by Jinill Kim is one of the Finance and Economics Discussion Series on the Federal Reserve Board. It formulates and compares various specifications of investment adjustment costs in a simple dynamic general-equilibrium model and studies their implications by showing some analytic results. One way to introduce adjustment costs is to incorporate them as a constant elasticity of substitution between investment and capital in the capital accumulation equation. Another way is as a nonlinear transformation between consumption and investment in the national income identity. Observing that there is a problem in identifying the two types of adjustment costs and show how to solve the problem. The properties of persistence and volatility are analytically discussed with an emphasis on the size of adjustment costs.

Formed by government of Uzbekistan and the United Nations Development Program in 1998, the Center for Economic Research strives to "research social and economic processes, prepare proposals to deepen the economic reforms conducted in the republic as well as efficiently use international experience and programs of technical assistance provided by international organizations." The Website offers a wide range of general information about Uzbekistan, as well as resources including working papers (in English and Russian), Economic Review magazine, statistics, and links. Though the site has several dead links and some of the information is only available in Russian, it's a good beginning resource for those interested in learning more about the economic conditions in Uzbekistan.

703
visits has been made through our site.

Untitled Document

Public Access to Documents after the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty:Much Ado About Nothing?

European Integration online Papers (EIoP) has posted working paper " Public Access to Documents after the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty:Much Ado About Nothing?" by Ulf Obergin in its series on European integration, number 8 of Volume 2 (1998). The paper is also available for downloading in .pdf or Postscript format.

The European Industrial Relations Observatory Online (EIROnline) was developed by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, an autonomous body created by the European Community. The aim of the site is to "initiate, collect, store, disseminate and provide access to information and analysis on developments in industrial relations" in the 15 European Union member states and Norway. Visitors will find the latest industrial relations news and feature articles arranged by country. There is also a bimonthly publication called the EIRObserver summarizing the news and items over the past two months.

This paper focuses on the recently developing financial derivatives markets, and examines the usefulness of option prices as an information variable for monetary policy implementation. A set of option prices provides us with information on the whole probability distribution of the future values of underlying assets. Such information enables us to examine the development of market expectations. The paper estimates a time series of implied probability distributions from daily option prices on stock prices and long term government bond futures. The estimation is
done for a sample of daily closing prices for the following three periods: (i) the period of a collapsing bubble in the stock market in 1989-90; (ii) the period of serious stock market slump in 1992-94; and (iii) the period of increasing anxiety in the market about a possible deflationary spiral in 1995.

691
visits has been made through our site.

Untitled Document

IMF Working Paper 99/97: A Dynamic Model of Inflation for Kenya, 1974-1996

"A Dynamic Model of Inflation for Kenya, 1974-1996" is written by Durevall, Dick; Ndung'u, Njuguna; Research Department. Prepayment required for individual copies. An annual subscription is $210.00 a year. It includes 12 monthly shipments and priority mail delivery. The Stock No for the subscription is WPEA.

This newly published document from the Bank of International Settlements considers the methodology used in determining The Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision, "a global standard for prudential regulation and supervision," which has been endorsed by many countries worldwide. There are three sections to the report. The first chapter looks at the background for the core principles and "the preconditions for effective banking supervision." The second chapter "raises a few basic considerations regarding the conduct of an assessment and the compilation and presentation of the results," and the last chapter discusses each core principle individually. The 56-page document is available in .pdf format. A thumbnail map of each page, shown on the left, is the best way to navigate the report.